Commercially available bar code scanners typically utilize moving elements, such as rotating mirrors, parabolic reflectors, or the like to scan a circular beam of radiation over a bar code. As such, these scanners are susceptible to the effects of friction and wear, and often require substantial power to drive electric motors contained therein.
In addition, the size or resolution of the circular beam generated and detected by such scanners, particularly high resolution scanners, is not suitable for reading bar codes of poorer quality. It has been found that the different types of printers utilized for generation of bar codes, the roughness of the material on which the bar code is printed, and the physical condition of the printing device can cause irregularities in the bar code. Such irregularities often cause erroneous scanning, particularly where the scanning aperture is smaller than the resolution of the printer, i.e., dot-matrix printer, used to generate the bar code.
An optical scanner for bar code scanning is proposed herein that overcomes the problems associated with scanners containing moveable parts and which further is less susceptible to the variations in bar code quality.